The idea of integrative pluralism offers a promising path for the development of theory in international security and international relations. Instead of either trying to shoehorn all theorising into a single, limited paradigm or giving up entirely on theoretical progress, the integrative pluralist approach calls for bringing diverse approaches together. More precisely, integrative pluralism involves explaining specific phenomena by linking causal processes across multiple layers of reality, and then using the findings to inform broader theoretical constructs such as IR theory paradigms. Elements of the integrative pluralism approach are already visible in the work of mainstream scholars such as Snyder and Katzenstein, as well as of critical scholars such as Sjoberg and Hansen, but the field has tended to overlook these scholars’ efforts at theoretical integration. To more explicitly develop integrative pluralism for our field, this article first draws on critical realist philosophy and social theory. It then illustrates how further steps in this direction might be taken, in particular by highlighting the integrative pluralist aspects of Kaufman's applications of symbolic politics theory to explaining ethnic conflict and war more generally.

It has always been true that foreign policy debates tend to proceed on a weak evidentiary base, with clever quips or stirring oratory regularly trumping sound analysis. According to Thucydides, for example, the Athenian assembly that endorsed the Sicilian expedition during the second Peloponnesian War had only the haziest conception of the adversaries' capabilities. Contemporary politics is distinctive not in the sloganeering quality of political discourse, but in the divergence between the quality of information available to society as a whole and the quality of information used in making decisions. For example, it was clear to any open-minded observer by the time of the Congressional vote in 2002 that implications of collaboration between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda lacked any basis in reliable evidence. By the time the Bush Administration initiated war in 2003, claims about Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons capabilities were also partially debunked and increasingly dubious. Still, the war went forward, and many Americans continued to believe the Bush Administration's false claims even after the Administration itself had abandoned them.Patrick Thaddeus Jackson is Associate Professor of International Relations in the School of International Service at the American University in Washington, DC (ptjack@ american.edu). Stuart J. Kaufman is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware (skaufman@udel.edu). For helpful comments and feedback on this article, we would like to thank Monica Duffy Toft, Neta Crawford, Daniel Nexon, and three anonymous reviewers.

The Ties That Divide: Ethnic Politics, Foreign Policy and International Conflict. By Stephen M. Saideman. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. 348p. $70.00 cloth, $23.00 paper.

The Geography of Ethnic Violence: Identity, Interests, and the Indivisibility of Territory. By Monica Duffy Toft. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. 256p. $37.50.

These two useful books represent important contributions to the literature on violent ethnic conflicts. Monica Duffy Toft proposes a useful theory and adduces convincing evidence on some of the key determinants of severe ethnic violence. Stephen Saideman provides an even stronger theory and strongly suggestive evidence for explaining states' decisions to intervene in ethnic conflicts over secession. Both books provide a mix of quantitative analysis and case studies to support their claims more or less convincingly. Both conclusions deserve prominent attention in the literature.

Rarely does an ethnic conflict remain wholly confined to its country of origin. Because ethnic groups often have members across international borders, their civil wars can have a strong influence on neighboring countries’ politics, impelling kindred communities to push for their state to intervene in support of imperilled relatives across the border. At the same time, strategic thinkers often find it tempting to destabilize neighboring countries, or to oppose groups acting as proxies for regional rivals. Because of such considerations, intervention in ethnic civil war becomes a political issue for the neighbors, with the emotional stakes often strengthening the hands of nationalists in the neighboring countries.

The world today, Benjamin Barber points out, is “falling precipitantly apart and coming reluctantly together at the very same moment.” While states from Canada to India are threatened with breakup due to fractious nationalist impulses of their peoples, the power of technology and markets is forcing ever-tighter economic integration worldwide. From a common-sense perspective, these two impulses are among the most important processes in contemporary world politics. Yet, there has been remarkably little attention paid to developing a theory of the international system that examines the effects of both. Hegemonic stability theory considers economic integration but not nationalism; the few studies of nationalism as a systemic force play down the effects of economic integration; and neorealism, the most widely accepted theory of the international system, has no room to address either trend. The field is, partly as a result, a cacaphony of voices largely talking past one another.

Over the years, a number of scholars have noted that ethnic groups in violent conflict act much like states in the international system; James O'Connell describes the dynamics as ‘international relations without safeguards’. Brief observations aside, however, few works actually apply International Relations theory to explain large-scale ethnic violence. While the oversight ought to be surprising, it is easily explained in terms of what International Relations theory calls the ‘level of analysis problem’.

This article uses two puzzles from the Brezhnev period to test competing models of Soviet military policy and of innovation in military “doctrine.” An organizational model of Soviet military policy offers the best explanation of both cases: why the Soviet Union's Brezhnevera military strategy contradicted the Politburo's priorities (to prevent any war from escalating to nuclear use) and why the Soviet Union agreed to the ABM treaty. The ABM case shows that civilian leaders can force change in military “doctrine” when they have a policy handle–a way of redefining the issue to remove it from the military's exclusive area of competence. When civilians lack a policy handle, as in the military strategy case, they are unable to force innovation if the military is unwilling.

The Russian government now faces the task of finding effective policy handles that will institutionalize civilian control of military policy. The fate of Russia's reforms may depend on it.